Mood changes during pregnancy and after the birth of a child.

This paper reports data obtained with five different measures of psychological change during a longitudinal study of 128 women in pregnancy and the first postnatal year. This group of women had relatively low levels of symptomatology and reported little dysfunction or distress. For the group as a whole, there were few significant changes over the course of pregnancy or over the course of the first postnatal year on the measures employed. In contrast, many scores exhibited significant change from late pregnancy to the puerperium. Without exception, the changes are in the direction of improved physical and psychological health after the birth, suggesting that most women feel better one month after the birth than one month before it. There were important differences between the patterns of change observed in individual women, confirming the fallacy of generalizing about childbearing women and emphasizing individual differences in response to this life-event.